


With My Eyes You Shall See

by lemurious



Series: Arda Forged [5]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Arda Forged, Canon Divergence, Disability, Gen, Head Injury, Healing, Hurt, Possible Hurt/Comfort, Post-Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Science, Surgery, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24801730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/pseuds/lemurious
Summary: After Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Húrin is captured - rescued? - and learns about his enemies more than he expected.
Series: Arda Forged [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839175
Comments: 13
Kudos: 42





	1. Aftermath

_War makes prisoners of us all_ , he thinks. A phrase he first heard years ago from a grizzled sergeant, of near-legendary fame, the sort that lived in songs. Merely mentioning these songs would be enough to banish an unfortunate recruit to a week of night watches.

With deliberate slowness coming from a lifetime of injured awakenings, he opens his eyes, turns over and pushes up on his elbows, swaying a little, catching his breath before putting the weight on his hands. After a while, he is able to muster sufficient strength to kneel, though it feels like another hour before venturing to stand up at the edge of the ravine, barely visible through the curtain of steady rain. Has he fallen off a horse and been left behind? Then where is the familiar noise of the battle? Void take them all – has he gone deaf?

He blinks, shaking his head, but it is not enough to dispel the grey muffled sensation of walking in a twisted sort of dream. Will this rain never stop?

_Earlier, it was raining fire and iron, cannonballs exploding above the clouds, sizzling shrapnel clawing deep into his skin, as beasts made of steel roared in the skies, and no archer could make them fall._

He has a nagging feeling in his chest, as if he is expected to orchestrate an attack or at least an orderly retreat. Surely, in a moment he will be greeted with a heartfelt slap on the shoulder, led to a horse, offered a drink and respectfully allowed to take his familiar position in leading the next charge. At least, he is quite sure that is where he belongs.

But where are the armies?

Would his garment offer any insight? The cuirass looks Dwarvish-made. He supposes he must be someone important. He has no helmet, which probably accounts for the headache and the itch of dried blood at his left temple.

He considers crying out for help and is surprised by the sharpness of the command he feels leaving his mouth without conscious intent: “Anyone nearby? Battle status report!”

The only answer is piercing headache and nausea, growing in strength as he turns away from the ravine to face a recently built mound.

_The bodies would not burn, in this rain._

The thought creeps in unbidden, and then suddenly there is no escape as memories rush him, spreading like ice in the veins, building into an avalanche he is powerless to stop, would that he froze to death right on the spot and never had to remember again.

He knows without a trace of doubt that that he will wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air from the memory of this smell, sickly sweet, and the feeling of rain on his face.

His place, is it in one of the mounds?

No. As cruel as it seems, he is alive. Why is he alive?

 _Because everyone knew he would be the last to fall_. _They called him the Steadfast, didn’t they?_

Húrin.

Húrin the Steadfast.

Their armies rode in crimson banners, silver on their reins and gold in their hair, singing of terror and vengeance against the Enemy in the North.

Now mounds of their dead are strewn across the plain.


	2. Surgeon

He wakes up disoriented, bobbing in a steady gait of heavy steps pounding the blood and ash into a black sludge that is unable to seep into the permafrost. Carried on someone’s shoulder, he sees the costly dark red velvet of the cloak and thinks again of their banners, how festive they rode, how sure of victory.

\----------------------------------------

The next time he comes to himself, he is strapped to a cold metal table, unable to turn his head, forced to watch figures in obsidian black examining strange steel instruments, heating some of them up in a brazier, sharply muttering to each other in tones of a frustrated argument.

“Can you hear me? Answer if you can speak, look upwards if you cannot”.

That is Common Speech, and it comes from behind his head. He is too numb to feel anything, but he can see strange instruments like miniature saws and forceps being passed to the speaker.

He can hardly force himself to care. What could be worse than what he realized right before collapsing into the mud?

“Yes. I can hear you, whoever you are.”

The immediate response is a whoop of triumph, quickly resuming a serious tone:

“I will explain later… if you survive to later, that is, and to get there, we need you to talk.”

So this is what happens now. Torture for information. He will not break.

“Stop with the martyred expression. I do not care what you say. Tell me about yourself, your favorite child, your favorite weapon, anything. Just. Talk.”

Well, it would hardly be crucial information, and he may be able to find out something about the captors. He starts talking, and feels distinctly annoyed by the impression that nobody is actually listening to his words.

“Excellent, excellent. Can you now say something in another language? Sindarin? Quenya? You can repeat what you said before.”

He haltingly starts reciting battle commands, mostly because he wants to hear the familiar words in the confusing nightmare his life seems to have become.

“That would be good enough, now, sing something. And wiggle your right hand a little, for good measure.”

He begins to sing their battle hymn and closes his eyes, imagining himself on that crisp autumn morning as he waited for the trumpets to sound, the promises he made to his family still on his lips. He sings again, and again, because it keeps bringing him back into the morning, lets him avoid thinking about what happened after. Eventually he starts beating the rhythm of the song with his palm, which leads to being awakened by an exasperated yell:

“ _Stop this_! Do _not_ move your body! I am elbows deep in your bloody mind!”

In blissfully few moments, the fog envelops him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1: even if brain injury causes complete paralysis, there is always one reflex that remains, and it is looking upwards.   
> Note 2: brain damage in the left temple can cause both memory deficits and loss of speech. Mairon is trying to make sure he does not damage the speech centers too much and does not cause paralysis, so he is asking his patient to speak, sing and move while operating.  
> Note 3: um, this is what happens when a scientist tries her hand at writing fanfic :D


	3. Pieces

His days are lost in rain and tears beyond count.

Each day, if time here is still measured in days, he wakes up inside a grey cloister, chill seeping under the door, ice-covered mountain peaks outside the window. At first he feels nothing but pain, later turning into exhaustion, then simple tiredness.

He remembers eating, and drinking water, and bitter liquid forced down his throat.

He remembers shadowy figures walking in, dragging him under the armpits out of the room, forcing him to walk in circles as snow fell from cinder clouds and mingled with the smoke.

The noise is inescapable, day or night the air is full of bellows, hammers, wheels, horns, he feels that he keeps waking up inside a giant machine.

He recognizes the same cloak, heavy red velvet, that was rubbing his cheek as he was carried through the battlefield, now on the shoulders of someone with a bearing too impatient to be regal, someone who for a moment, out of the corner of the eye, seems ablaze with fire. This visitor keeps coming back to ask the strangest questions. His name. His household. The year. The names of Noldorin houses and their chief princes. Incongruously, it always ends with counting backwards from a hundred. He keeps slipping somewhere around eighty and deciding that next time he will surely ask the reason for this interrogation, but falls asleep, again.

Sometimes, there are two visitors that send all others scattering into the corners. Are these his guards? There must be guards, he supposes. He must be captive. A prisoner of war.

White gemstones in an iron crown appear mere trinkets before the light in the newcomer's eyes, full of hunger and determination.

So this is the end, he thinks. Morgoth himself came to dispatch me.

But Morgoth barely pays attention, instead carefully listening to the same litany of questions, frowning at the responses, whispering to the other visitor who must be his second in command. Oh, right. The pieces finally fall together. The stories told of that one would be enough to make anyone throw themselves out of the window, but even the thought of it feels too exhausting.

“Mairon. Stop this. You did what you could think of, you know we have yet to perfect the procedure and it can take years for the mind to return. He was a lord among men, he will beat this. We will turn him yet."

Mairon, is it? Admirable? The look of open admiration woven through with curiosity on the face of (he remembers, this is the Enemy, the reason behind this war, he thinks of mounds drenched in the rain) is evidence enough for the name.

\---------------------

Gradually, more days find purchase in his mind. The shadowy figures solidify into, mostly, Orcs. Sometimes, Elves. Sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. Most have visible scars, are crooked of face or body. Often, one or more of their limbs is a shining contraption of gears and wheels, moving with a jerky grace and enviable speed.

He starts to recognize them. One, in particular.

“Gelmir, a former bannerman of Finrod's.

“My brother stormed Angband itself when I came out of the window. Didn’t even give me a chance to plead for a truce, a surrender, anything but the slaughter he brought upon himself and the rest of you.

“The last time we had seen each other, he had left me for dead, hacked into pieces by scimitars. Apparently I am not that easy to kill, and the pieces may even be worth sticking back together, though I doubt anyone in Beleriand could match the surgeons of this place.

“I may not be waving a sword on top of a horse, though I would have you know that I am just as deadly with a crossbow. But that never was my favorite activity anyway. Instead, I get to help others like myself to walk, or brush their hair, or strum their harps again. I made that plate in your head, by the way.”

“Plate?”

“Your left temple. It is actually the third time I am telling you this. You will remember, eventually.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The questions asked by Mairon are fairly common for assessing the severity of head injury. Including counting backwards - for some reason it can be remarkably difficult to do after some injuries.


	4. Cure

_You do not realize how wrong the stories can be until you find yourself in one_ , Húrin thinks.

Once the fog of confusion finally cleared, he expected unimaginable tortures mingled with honeyed deception. Apparently they were not deemed necessary.

Not when there is time for slow recovery, with many breaks to stop in his steps and kneel on the ground, coughing, gasping for air, remembering the sickly sweet smell and mounds in the rain. Not when there is time offered for silence and solitude, and the inevitable torment of decisions made and courses taken, which in the end could achieve nothing to prevent a bloodbath.

Húrin begins to take solitary walks around the courtyard. One day he tries running, and even though twenty steps make him dizzy with exhaustion, it is an improvement that would have been unthinkable when he first woke up in the tower. Gradually, with the strength of the body, the mind begins to return, and with it, the memories, cast in blood and gold, feeling more real than the monochrome landscape of towers, peaks and glaciers, half-hidden behind black smoke repeatedly belched by the forges.

His joy at once again being able to keep track of time is mingled with dismay that time appears to pass without any more of these strange daily interrogations. Or, for that matter, any visitor at all except a few Orcs who still remain as guards, more to observe the formality than to actually prevent him from going anywhere, and even those seem to be increasingly harried. They converse in hushed tones about a new disease, a plague from the East sweeping through the entire fortress after decimating the Northern towns.

Húrin has always thought himself well accustomed to death following his footsteps in battle, in sickness, in accident, but this feels different and carries a special sort of dread with the realization that even immortality offers no protection.

The guards whisper of Mairon pulling triple shifts in the hospital, in a desperate, losing attempt to halt the spread of the disease, of Melkor sending his most trusted generals to satellite fortresses away in the mountains.

When every Orc jumps to attention at the familiar clipped gait of Mairon’s iron-toed boots striking the stones in the hallway, Húrin realizes he had been anticipating this visit since the plague first reared its ugly head. Now he can no longer keep himself from thinking about the _other_ visitor who had been missing.

“You. Húrin. Gelmir has passed beyond the Sea. He asked us to tell you… do everything you can to make yourself a life here, of a sort, because there is no life left to which you could return.” Mairon’s eyes are ringed in purple, flames no longer dancing just out of sight around a haggard face. Each phrase comes out in a stutter, as if he barely remembers how to form words and has no energy left to consider their meaning.

“I suppose it were better if you could still forget. Perhaps it were better if we all could. Such arbitrary, reckless slaughter…”

Despite just having convinced himself of being battle-hardened enough to be cavalier about death, Húrin feels shaken by the words. Somehow, he never really expected it. Surely, one of the Firstborn, one who even he could notice was among the most respected in Thangorodrim, the one who moved on wheels and springs with such precision and speed that no mere flesh could ever provide, could not succumb to a mere sickness. Húrin awaits the choking wave of grief, but instead he finds himself shaking in hollow rage.

“No life to which to return? What of my family? What of my armies? How is this not the cruelest torture of all, forcing me to be a prisoner of my own mind? I would take death over this!” The meaning of words is not important, he just wants to hit, to hurt, so that he would, if he is sufficiently lucky, be hurt in return, so that physical pain would drown this sudden onslaught of piercing loneliness.

Mairon’s mask of exhaustion momentarily twists into derision. “You do seem to be getting back to what I heard was your original insufferable self. If the Void-buster on the throne hadn’t specifically made me search the sodden battlefields for you, my life would have been so much easier. Now he can deal with your ravings!”

The door slams so hard it barely remains on the hinges.

 _Making the Maia angry may not have been the best idea_... Húrin has little concern for himself, but his family is another matter. The only reassurance is that in these days even the ever-present spies could hardly be expected to spare the time for following the internal affairs of the Houses of Men.

That same night, he is summoned.

\-----------------------

The audience chamber is located at the top of the spire, floor-length windows separated by slender columns, letting in moonlight that illuminates the white clouds below intertwined with black smoke billowing from the forges. Chairs placed in the middle of the chamber remain unoccupied by the two figures looking through the Eastward window.

Húrin can overhear the shreds of the conversation as he approaches the entrance escorted by his two Orc guards.

“…Gothmog all the way to Cuivienen looking for survivors. The Sixth Army has been hit especially hard, though it should recover its capacity as long as Doriath remains closed and the rest of them keep nursing their wounds…”

The reply blazes back in frustration and what sounds close to the edge of panic.

“My lord. _Melkor._ The military capacity of the Sixth Army is the least of our troubles. My best smiths and mechanics are dropping like flies. At this rate our forges will be emptied before the next full moon. No matter how much light we harness from the Silmarils, it needs to be put to _work_ , if we want our armies not to starve, which means, we need to have enough _people_ to work it! And we are no closer to figuring out this plague, except that by now I am short half of my surgeons!”

Mairon lets go of Melkor’s arm and whips around in a flash of fury, taking a few steps towards the doorway, staring right past Húrin into the darkness.

Feeling like he just blundered into an intimate scene, Húrin clears his throat and announces himself.

Melkor is the one to respond.

“We have been waiting for you to return to yourself. It would be a sore grievance if leaders like you perished from a mere head wound…”

“You know very well I am nothing but a captive in your fortress.”

That gets a rise out of the Vala.

“A captive, you say? Have we enslaved you, forced you to back-breaking labor or to fighting and dying for a cause you would not even know about? For that is what you Men do to your captives… and only if they are Men themselves. Still a mercy, compared to Elves, who would not stoop as low as to capture one of my Orcs. They would just kill them instead.”

With a grimace, he continues. “Normally, you would get to train in the forges and the mines, and, given your experience, in the armies, before deciding where you would fit.” Melkor holds out a hand to stop the inevitable retort. “You _would_ fit, eventually, and you _would_ stay. Unless you are a more fanatical type than we thought, in which case… but that is not important. We rescued you, and healed you back to yourself, and now, we may need _your_ help, which can be given freely or taken by force, your choice.”

“You had a daughter, dead of the plague that seems a shadow of this one. Did _you_ get sick?”

Húrin was planning to stay silent, but the last few sentences have sent his mind spinning, searching for lies and manipulations, so he nods without thinking.

“Mairon, looks like you were right again. He may be the key to the cure.” Melkor’s voice is brimming with relief, and Mairon actually cackles, all exhaustion fallen off in a heartbeat, a hard glint in his eyes, a picture of a Maia back in his element of molding nature to suit his desires.

“There will be time for explanation. We need your blood. Now.”

The catch in Mairon’s voice suggests an opening. Húrin decides to bargain.

“’Willing or not’, you forgot to add, correct? Well, what about the _next_ time you will need it? And are you sure you will be able to keep me alive, if I will choose death rather than becoming a pawn in your game?”

Mairon _explodes_ in return.

“A pawn! You miserable, short-lived fool! You are getting a chance, well, a chance _at_ a chance to stop this nightmarish slaughter and rescue our entire fortress, in addition to half of your own precious Beleriand!”

Melkor raises an eyebrow, and that is enough to stop Mairon mid-sentence. The calm in his voice sounds more threatening than rage. 

“Not because we could not keep you alive for as long, and in as _pleasant_ circumstances, as we wished. But because I know you would make us a great captain, and will not throw away that possibility. Name your price.”

“My family.” Húrin quickly responds, before there is time to change their minds. “My family: I want to know what happened to them, and I want them to be left alone, to live their lives in peace”.

The chamber goes so quiet Húrin can hear his own heartbeat. After ten, twenty beats, Melkor sighs. 

“Signed and sealed. They will get to live their lives in as much peace... as they themselves will choose. Without my interference...or yours. And you will see them, once your part of the deal is fulfilled.”

Having been relieved of a full tankard of blood, Húrin leaves Mairon shouting orders at a small battalion of Orcs sweating inside a maze of bubbling flasks and tubes, rotating bulbs to condense drops from the air. He climbs back up the tower, in spite of the exhaustion feeling pride at having outwitted his captors and, deep within himself, a nagging worry that he must have been taken for a fool, and he is not even sure how or by whom.

He is told to sit in one of the chairs. Melkor takes the other one, and hands him a black orb with what looks like a small thunderstorm raging inside.

“This is the chief Palantir of the network that stretches out all across the northern Beleriand.”

Húrin looks on uncomprehendingly.

“ _With my eyes you shall see, with my ears you shall hear_ , as it were… I located the Palantiri closest to your family. Go on.”

Húrin’s fingertips go white with tension as he grips the orb and looks inside.


	5. Home

His story circles around Beleriand, telling of arrogance and fate, false names and deceits, and too many deaths.

But it did not start in darkness.

It started with reassurance, a comforting view of Húrin’s family going on with their daily lives despite him no longer being around. Húrin watches his boy waving around a wooden sword, sees a weary kind of peace in Morwen’s eyes, and begins to wonder if they have already managed to build a precious, fragile sort of happiness that would be shattered if he returned with scars of war and memory half gone. The few war victims he had seen in his hometown had been met with suspicion and pity and forced to live as outcasts, barely scraping by. Húrin Thalion, a warlord and a leader, who has never really considered a different occupation - now, he may realize who he is one day out of three, his language sometimes devolves into a stutter and then into silence for hours, even days. Perhaps it would be better for them to mourn him and move on with their lives.

And Húrin does not ask for another look into the Palantir for years.

Instead, once the hallways are no longer packed with choking, dying Orcs, once Mairon’s face has lost the grin of mirthless defiance, Húrin breaks the last of his oaths and asks Mairon to teach him the basics of post-battlefield surgery. Despite undoubtedly being aware of Húrin’s lapses, and lost days, and the maddening necessity to repeat every procedure a dozen times, Mairon only nods and hands him a surgeon’s coat.

There are bandages to be changed, bitter herbs to be steeped into concoctions and poured into mouths, there is always someone to be taught to move on their legs of flesh or iron, to be dragged around the courtyard. To be encouraged that they will walk, and speak, and be themselves again, regardless of being able to lift a hammer or a sword. A single word of Húrin’s used to be sufficient to send his armies on a reckless charge. Now he tries to infuse the same strength of will, the same unbreakable drive to survive, into hapless soldiers, be they Elves or Men, missing a limb, or staring at the wall with empty eyes. Most of them get better and rejoin the armies. And despite repeating to himself that healing enemy soldiers can only be considered an act of desperation so as not to be dire treason, that he should start looking for a way out of here, Húrin stays.

He can no longer bring himself to think of his enemy – his harsh, obsessive, talented instructor – as Sauron. No, he has no illusions about the Maia: they would be quickly dissipated by endless battalions marching out of the gates in tidy columns, winged and wheeled machines behind them, returning with news of cities pillaged, burned to the ground, bringing plunder and captives, or dragging their injured on makeshift stretchers. Mairon is a warlord by profession, if not by choice – admirable and terrible in ruthless efficiency and unquenchable drive to forge an empire like a sword. He works under Melkor in less of a hierarchy than a shared power born in a clash of two brilliant, twisted minds. Yet he would not be defined by war alone.

Because one morning there is a gas explosion in the mines, and as victims are being carried in, Mairon is _everywhere_ : speaking to those who can still hear him, checking for signs of life in those who cannot, slicing, sawing, suturing, cauterizing, yelling orders the entire time in focused, clear cadence, in complete relentless disregard of despair creeping through his crew; and everyone keeps on working through the day, and the night, and the day after. After the dusk settles for the second time and the last of the patients are rolled out of the surgery, Húrin is too exhausted to decide whether he should feel sorrow or pride. Mairon’s voice is barely audible when he orders Húrin to clean the floor and pushes past his lieutenants waiting outside the room, past Melkor himself wrapped in a cloak leaning against the wall. Húrin watches Mairon stumble outside onto the snow under the cruel light of midwinter stars that refuse to dim for those who have just lost a hopeless battle, and knows that feeling all too well.

\------------------------

Goaded by rumors that have slithered in under the gates, Húrin looks into the Palantir again, and the walls of the chamber rush towards him, crushing him in darkness.

His family is shattered by the fate or their own deeds of rage and grief that he cannot yet despise, because he can understand, because, had he not chosen to remain here, he would have done the same. His children. Húrin stops working in the wards, keeps reliving what he had seen every waking minute. He wishes he could still feel fear, any emotion really, as he storms and rages at Melkor, calls him a deceiver, blames him for arranging the misery for his family. Melkor stays quiet, but once Húrin is out of breath, the Vala repeats the request and the promise that they spoke years ago, in exchange for Húrin’s blood to save them from the plague.

Then, a dragon scorches the land and taunts the survivors, and Húrin knows it must be one of Mairon’s twisted inventions, he grasps onto the thought that the misery that had befallen his children must be Mairon’s fault.

Mairon responds with brutal nonchalance. “Yes, all dragons started as mine. I sculpted them from lizards and forges and war machines, bred them, and tried to tame them. But once they woke up into their own minds, they could not be tamed, no more than you or I could. I would not say it was a mistake – a new living mind is never a mistake – but I would say I wish this did not happen.”

“You should’ve destroyed them when you realized that you wouldn’t be able to control them!”

“ _Destroyed_ them, because they would not do my bidding? That is how _your_ side thinks!” Mairon’s sputtered words are stumbling over each other.

“Do you realize that this was the last step in making me leave Almaren and end up here? Watching Aulë at the peak of his power any of us would have given _anything_ to share, creating an _entire race from nothing_ and then immediately offering to destroy it, smash them back into the earth, just because they may not have pleased his petty, jealous god? They still paint me as the guileless Maia who could not help but be seduced, while I would not return to those halls if they created a new Arda and placed it into my hands.” And then the raw dismay Húrin momentarily glimpses on Mairon’s face gets shuttered, wiped off by a familiar smirk. "Besides, I would miss the company."

Húrin does not respond. He stops talking altogether, for a while, leaves the wards and returns to his chamber, where he lies staring at the ceiling, occasionally dreaming of home, these are simple dreams, he is hunting deer, or putting a new roof on his house.

After months of agony, the dragon is gone and so are his children, and Húrin feels he will not be able to take another breath here under the same stones that could not contain his guilt. He announces his wish to leave. Mairon tries to convince him to stay, entice him with a possibility of redemption in helping others survive. But Húrin’s children could not, did not survive, and Húrin closes himself against the words, lets them bounce off him like pebbles. The next morning he folds his healer’s coat with great precision, leaves it on the bed and walks out of Thangorodrim, through ice and snow, rubble and dirt, and finally, the first grass in the spring.


	6. Coda: Traitor

In the end, Húrin thinks of the phrase he mistook as an invitation, when he should have heeded it as a warning.

_With my eyes you shall see._

Staring down scorn and pity, Húrin begins to see.

He walks to Hithlum first, hoping to find his few surviving military comrades, perhaps catch a glimpse of Morwen, though he does not really dare to expect forgiveness, not from her. He is greeted by hostile stares that only grow colder when he introduces himself. 

“How dare he call himself Húrin Thalion, the greatest of captains of our Age! We knew and mourned Húrin’s noble bearing and unmatched skill with a sword, when he sadly perished in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears…”

Before too long Húrin meets someone who recognizes him. A childhood acquaintance, who invites him to his house for a night, shutting the door in the face of the nosy crowd. But the embers of former friendship can no longer be rekindled. 

“Even if you truly are who you claim to be, there is nothing for you here. Nobody wants to be associated with the tragedy that befell your family, for fear that it might spread. It’s hard to believe that you have actually escaped, instead of being sent here to spy for Morgoth”.

Húrin cannot fall asleep at night. It is too warm, too quiet. During the day he goes looking for work, and all the doors are politely closed in his face. He offers his aid to the healers, but then they start discussing the positions of the stars that are the most auspicious to survive a breached birth, and this time Húrin finds the door by himself. He remembers his frustration when his memory just would not hold the correct names of medications and he had to constantly look at his notes; he thinks of the exhilaration of time flying by in complete focus on stabilizing a patient, a momentary belief in disease and death as simple enemies, surely conquerable with the right strategy. 

Húrin is forced to admit to himself that he may have found relief, for a while, under the towers covered in soot and ice, in the ever-present rhythm of bellows in the forges that he could no longer hear unless he focused on it, same as he does not hear his own breath.

The fortress he defied, survived, and left behind.

Momentarily, Húrin considers raising his old company and reclaiming his seat as the leader, but even if he succeeded, he could only retain the power under constant threat to his rivals, and he has not raised a blade in anything but surgery in years. So he leaves again and walks towards the hidden city, the childhood secret of his brother and himself. At least the Elven kingdom must contain forges and mines, in addition to palaces and fountains, and possibly, even kindness for regrets and mistakes that a single human life seems to small to contain.

He cannot find the entrance. His shouts ring in the wilderness; he once was an honored guest and is surprised to be able to feel anger and frustration at being shut out. But the city remains buried deep behind the mountain passes, lost to him beyond repair like his own family.

(Even Morwen. They did meet, at last, at the graves of their children. There was little to say. His kind of guilt – of having had a chance to rebuild himself as their world fell apart – had stained him to her forever.) 

Glaciers shimmer in purple and crimson as the sun is setting somewhere in the Sea behind the peaks, there is no sound, not even an echo of his voice, and still he cannot find the entrance.

Defeated, Húrin walks to the Sea, but icy waves fail to numb the raw torment of his disjointed memories. 

Still, there is one more task to be completed. Having lived on both sides of the story, Húrin decides that his children should be immortalized as victims of fate instead of their own choices. It is the only kindness he is able to give. Although he feels he deserves it, he does not reveal the extent of his guilt, for the sake of the remaining branch of his family that continues living in the city encircled by snow-capped mountains. 

So Húrin weaves a tale of tragic fate and desperate endings. Once it precedes his wanderings along the coast, he knows his job here is complete.

He writes his own death into the song, and turns back towards the North.


End file.
